Mandatory Vaccination Won’t Significantly Reduce Illnesses In Schools

Eliminating diseases in schools is a worthwhile endeavor, but mandatory vaccination in schools won’t achieve this goal:

Measles

Measles,the very disease that prompted this law, did not occur within a single California school during the Disneyland outbreak. Therefore, even if a mandatory vaccination law had already been in place last year, the outbreak would still have occurred in the same manner. We would have to go back 25 years to find an example of the last time our country had a large measles outbreak which resulted in multiple fatalities. No child has died of measles in the U.S. in 13 years. Measles did NOT spread through our schools, nor does it pose a realistic threat of death for schoolchildren; therefore new laws eliminating philosophical or religious exemptions to vaccination are completely unnecessary.

Whooping Cough

Whooping cough (otherwise known as pertussis) is a disease that DOES spread through our schools, yet, this law won’t impact the number of whooping cough cases in schools because almost all cases are in vaccinated children.

The California Public Health Department reported that 90% of the 9000 children who caught whooping cough in our state last year were vaccinated.

Two recent peer-reviewed studies show that the vaccine series is only 24% effective in elementary-age kids and that the whooping cough booster shot in 7th grade becomes ineffective after just two years.

The CDC website clearly states on their whooping cough page that unvaccinated children are NOT the cause of the outbreaks; rather, it is the waning immunity of the vaccine that allows the disease to spread, even in fully vaccinated children.

Furthermore, a new study from the FDA and published by the National Academy of Sciences in 2014 proved that the pertussis vaccine fails to prevent infection with the disease and transmission to others.

Other Diseases

Out of the 10 diseases for which vaccination is now mandated, 8 do not circulate within schools (only chickenpox and whooping cough do), and 2 (tetanus and hepatitis B) are not even contagious through day-to-day contact. There is no actual risk of infection to children in schools to warrant such strict vaccination laws which restrict the right to an equal education for hundreds of thousands of children.

Asking questions and opposing mandatory vaccination law does not make you anti-vaccination…it makes you pro-immunity education.